Taylor Swift: Her Allure Photo Shoot

Broken hearts, mean girls, and frizzy hair—Taylor Swift knows all about them, as you can tell by the lyrics she writes. See exclusive outtakes from her cover shoot with Michael Thompson in New York City.

Swift flew to New York from Nashville the night before the shoot, but still managed to arrive at the studio ten minutes early. As she sat for hair and makeup, photographer Michael Thompson joked, "So, Taylor, are you nervous?" Swift replied, "No, are you?" Here, the singer poses for a few test shots.

On keeping her private life private, Swift said, "It's fine to talk about love publicly. But I think when you talk about virginity and sex publicly, people just automatically picture you naked." The singer wears a cotton silk taffeta dress by Lanvin.

To give Swift's ringlets a rougher, tougher look, hairstylist Serge Normant spritzed volumizer at her roots and rubbed a silicone smoothing serum through the rest. He created random spirals throughout with a curling iron, then separated her curls with his fingers. "I wanted it to look loose and lived-in, like second-day hair," Normant said.

Makeup artist Gucci Westman wanted to give Swift "an updated Vargas-girl look, with a strong mouth and beautiful skin." First, she blended cream highlighter and concealer over Swift's entire face. Then she applied mauve blush, brown eye shadow, black mascara, and vivid red lipstick, which Swift loved so much that Westman gave her a tube of her own.

Swift, who is booked on a six-month tour through October for her album Fearless, blogs almost daily. "I never would have sold any records if my fans hadn't gone out and bought them. It's so incredible to go out and sign autographs for nine hours straight," she said. "That's just my favorite thing to do, honestly."

Swift is an intense observer of her own life, analyzing her experiences and then writing about them. "I'm the kind of person who needs all her time to be worth the energy," she said. "Let's say I date a guy who really does nothing but damage me. And you've spent time, you've spent effort, and you've put everything into trying to make that work. And it didn't. So you write a song about it. It was worth everything, if you write a song about it."